Woman inspired to help hospice with Mother's Day cakes

Mother’s Day will be even more difficult at Chapman House hospice this year because each loved one may have just one visitor.

This daily pandemic precaution is taken to limit the risk of infecting vulnerable residents or staff with the respiratory virus, as set out in provincial guidance for all hospices.

In Ontario, of the 1,599 deaths due to COVID-19, 1,187 were in long-term care settings as of Saturday morning.

By Saturday afternoon, Grey-Bruce had no COVID deaths, two long-term care facilities were still listed with outbreaks and 90 people had tested positive, one more than Friday. The 23 health care workers who’ve tested positive remained unchanged. In all, 71 people in Grey-Bruce had recovered.

When Lynne Bennett’s mother, Judy Wilson-Graham, died surrounded by her family about a year ago, Bennett felt so grateful they could be together, especially when her son made it home from a trip to be with his grandmother just before she died.

His grandmother hadn’t wanted him to see her so reduced but when an experienced hospice nurse asked if there was someone she was holding on to see before she dies, Bennett called her son to come home from a Florida trip.

“He came to his nanny and whispered in her ear ‘I’m home nanny. It’s ok to go now.’” She died 10 hours later, Bennett wrote in a letter to The Sun Times.

Bennett spent the final 10 days of her mother’s life with her at Chapman House in Owen Sound, after enduring eight months of exhausting work caring for her 71-year-old mother at home in Ayton.

“They gave me the chance to be her daughter again, not her caregiver or nurse; just her daughter,” her letter said.

“Thinking that if my mom was at Chapman House now with COVID-19, she would’ve never been able to say goodbye and for her to go with peace in her heart.”

Bennett, who once had a bakery, started baking novelty birthday cakes which looked like rolls of toilet paper, including a special Mother’s Day cake, which she’s been selling to raise money for the hospice via her Facebook page, thecakedivacanada.

She’d dropped off cakes in Fergus Saturday and was on her way up to Owen Sound later in the day.

“Instead of crying this Mother’s Day, thinking of just how much I miss my momma, this is my way of giving back to the people who gave me time with my mom before she died,” she said.

She sold about 10 cakes and raised about $200 after expenses over the 10 days she’d been baking for the hospice. She said she’ll keep baking to raise money for the hospice as long as people want the cakes.

Alex Hector, the executive director of Residential Hospice of Grey Bruce, which operates Chapman House, said Saturday he was unaware of Bennett’s gesture but he was grateful and overwhelmed by people’s generosity.

This Mother’s Day will be different under COVID, with just one visitor permitted, he agreed. The hospice doctor considers relaxing that rule only for people facing the “very final moments” of life.

An organization called Frontline Connect gave the hospice two computer tablets Friday for people to video- and audio- chat with loved ones. The hospice had just once device for that purpose.

And Hector feels certain family members will be peering through the sliding glass doors of their loved one’s room on Mother’s Day, as they have regardless of weather, since the province imposed strict visiting orders to limit the virus spread.

The need for donations is always critical for the hospice, which must raise almost half, some $900,000 to $1 million every single year to cover expenses not paid by government.

COVID-19 restrictions caused the cancellation of Hike for Hospice and a fundraising gala, which together usually bring in more than $230,000. Even donations via funeral homes are down, given limits on gatherings.

But past donors and others in the community answered Hector’s plea for help so that while he remains concerned about finances, he’s less so now, he said.

The hospice is applying for all available government support to ease COVID hardship. But the crisis has revealed funding inequities for all hospices which Hector hopes the government will address once the pandemic passes.

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